Google Smart Reply: Let the Robots Chat with your Friends for you

The technological world is getting smarter! And, with the advent of the robot named Sophia who recently got the citizenship of Saudi Arabia, the technology stepped a foot forward. However, it does not stop here as now Google is testing a smart reply robot, which is able to chat with your friends on your behalf and get yourself free. Google uses an AI-based auto-reply system that suggests smart replies and unbinds you from tapping on your smartphone keyboard to keep up with your friends.

While Amazon came up with the Amazon Lex for voice recognition lately, the tech giant, Google is working on something more of the robots talking to robots kind of a thing. Google’s Area 120 is currently testing the Google AI Chatbot Transcript System. According to many, the new system, called Reply, provides users with the one-click response to all their chats and communications. Notably, Area 120, also known as the small ‘experimental program within Google’, is an in-house incubator of Google that lets its employees work on their personal projects.

“You probably get a lot of chat messages. And you want to be there for people, but also for people in the real world. What if replying were literally one tap away?” says one of the officials of Area 120.

The Smart Reply feature uses Google’s Artificial Neural Network (ANN) to analyze the message content in an intellectual way that it suggests three most appropriate responses out of the millions of replies. Google carried out the same feature to its Gmail back in 2015, which proved to be a lifesaver for its users.

The Smart AI-based suggested replies is assumed to allow users to respond with one-tap functionality to their Google’s Hangout and Allo chats, along with some other messaging apps including Android Messages, Facebook Messenger, Skype, Slack, Twitter Direct Message and WhatsApp as well. The suggested smart replies will appear in the notification bar of these aforementioned applications.

Other than providing the option of Smart Replies to its users, the Google AI Reply System may offer some other automated features. For instance, the Smart Reply AI System has the ability to autoreply your texts such as “when can you be home?” via using your location, your preferred mode of transport and the distance between your current location and your home. Moreover, this new Artificial Intelligence can also disable the silent mode option if it finds the device receives a message that seems urgent, for example, “I am Ron and I’m in the dungeon of the castle, help me please” or “Hey! We are here at The Black Horse London Bar – San Francisco, where are you?” It sounds amazing, right?

Well, it includes some more incredible features such as the AI-based auto-reply system is able to inform everyone on your list when you are on holiday, just using your calendar. It can further enable an ‘advanced do not disturb mode’ that not only tells the people you can’t chat at the moment, but also scan your incoming messages to check if there is an urgent message you should know about.

While the release date of this amazing feature, Smart Reply, is not confirmed yet, users can get a chance to opt for a beta version of the app. However, the feature will only be available for the Android platforms for the moment.